“Ghost!”
Marci screamed the name beneath him, and suddenly, the spirit was there, but not as Julius remembered. This was no fluffy transparent ghost cat. It wasn’t even the shadowy figure of the faceless Roman legionnaire that seemed to be the Empty Wind’s preferred combat form. This was a giant. A mountain of a man eight feet tall who blew in on a wind even colder than Svena’s ice. His dusky flesh was still dark, but it was no longer shadowy or see-through. Quite the opposite, the spirit now looked even more solid than Julius himself. With so much magic crammed inside him, Ghost had a weight to him that no living thing could match. Julius could actually feel his own magic bending toward the spirit like metal shavings toward a magnet as Ghost held up his hand to stop the flood of iridescent power rising up to swallow them.
He also stopped the collapse of the house, which, now that there was a dragon-sized hole blasted straight through the middle, was no longer structurally stable. The chimney fell over as Julius watched, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the living room. He was looking up to make sure the roof wasn’t about to follow suit when he saw Marci’s spirit looking down at them.
As always, the Empty Wind’s face matched his name—an empty helmet with two blue-white glowing eyes floating like fireflies inside—but here, too, something was different. It wasn’t just shadows in there anymore. This was a deeper darkness. Staring into it, Julius could almost feel himself being forgotten, as if his bones were already crumbling dust. It was horrifying, but he couldn’t force himself to look away. He was trapped in the sudden realization of his own mortality, the truth that even a dragon like him would eventually die and be forgotten. They would all be forgotten, and—
Marci reached up and slapped her hands over his eyes, breaking the spell. Julius collapsed into her the moment the darkness let him go. He was still gasping when he heard her yell at Ghost. “I thought that only worked on the other side!”
“So did I,” replied a thousand empty voices.
“Well, can you tone it down or something?”
There was a long pause, and then the freezing wind began to slack off. “Sorry,” Ghost said in a far more normal—but still incredibly creepy—voice. “It’s just… I’ve never had this much magic before. It’s incredible.”
“I’m sure it is,” Marci said, dropping her hands from Julius’s eyes. “But as a wise man once said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ I don’t mind you stuffing yourself full of magic, but please don’t send Julius into an existential crisis. I just got him back.”
“Sorry,” the spirit said again, and then his voice brightened. “I stopped the magic.”
“I saw,” she said proudly. “And caught the house! A-plus job on both, by the way. Just keep up the good work until Myron and I can reestablish the ward.”
“I can hold it for as long as you need,” Ghost said, his empty voice a bit too joyful for Julius’s comfort. “It’s just like it was back in the Sea of Magic, but even greater. I can fly here, Marci. I can feel the dead all over the world. They call to me, and I can help them now. I can help them all.”
“And we will,” Marci promised as she helped Julius back to his feet. “But right now, we have to focus on the immediate concerns, like what hit our roof.”
She turned to look through the shattered front of the house, glaring at the giant dragon that was still lying in the long gouge he’d put in their gravel driveway. From the feathers, it was obvious the culprit was a Heartstriker, but Julius had never seen one so colorful, aside from Bethesda herself. Even covered in insulation and drywall dust from the house he’d just destroyed, the dragon looked like a giant bird of paradise. His feathers were a riot of tropical greens, reds, purples, golds, and rich blues. Heavy bone gauntlets encased the delicate scales above his clawed feet, the transformed evidence of a Fang of the Heartstriker. Despite all this, though, it wasn’t until the pigeon swooped down through the hole the dragon had left in the spiraling Skyways overhead that Julius finally realized exactly which Heartstriker he was looking at.
“Bob?”
The beautiful dragon shook the dust from his feathers and rolled over, pulling himself out of the crater to smile down at Julius. “In my defense,” he said, “that was not the entrance I’d planned.”
“Not the entrance you…” Julius trailed off as his hands clenched into fists. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to make a smooth recovery,” Bob replied, looking around until he spotted something in the dark. “Ah-ha!”
He reached out and snagged a backpack hidden under the edge of the on-ramps. “I stashed this here months ago, in case of just such an emergency,” he said, unzipping the bag delicately with his long claws to pull out a set of perfectly folded clean clothes. “I’d intended to fly in, of course, not crash, but I’m actually only a few feet from where I’d planned to—”
“Brohomir!”
The name came out in a roar, making even Bob jump as Chelsie stormed out of the broken house. She crossed the dirt in record time, stopping right in front of the bigger dragon’s enormous claws with a look of pure murder. “What game are you playing now?”
“At the moment?” Bob held up the folded clothes. “Attempting to get dressed so we can have a proper conversation. I can’t have my grand entrance spoiled by distracting nudity, and trust me, my nudity is highly distracting.”
“Distracting is all you do,” Chelsie snarled, but she turned her back just the same. Smiling down at her, Bob’s dragon disappeared in a puff of smoke and rainbow feathers. When he reappeared a few moments later, he was wearing a pair of ripped jeans and buttoning a Hawaiian shirt over his still-healing chest. “Is Amelia here?”
“Where else would I be?” Amelia called, picking her way through the debris toward them. “It’s good to see you,” she said, pushing Chelsie aside so she could hug her brother. “But seriously, how long were you planning to make us wait? I was getting sick of—”
Whatever she’d been about to say was lost in a squeal as Chelsie’s daughter—who’d been hiding with Fredrick in the kitchen the last Julius knew—burst out of the ruined house and charged full speed at Bob. She leaped on him a second later, knocking him back into the crater when she hit his chest like a rocket. He hugged her back with a laugh, keeping his fingers clear of her excitedly snapping teeth.